Discrimination and Disadvantagetag:typepad.com,2003:weblog-1240784834742576762019-01-01T17:46:59-05:00TypePadClosing Shop...tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a01901e204628970b022ad3caca31200b2019-01-01T17:46:59-05:002019-01-01T17:46:59-05:00This is just a note to let everyone know that we are closing the doors here at Discrimination and Disadvantage. Thanks to all of the readers who have been interested in the blog over the years. Kevin, Shelley, and I appreciate your time and support. I also owe a huge...Thomas Nadelhoffer

This is just a note to let everyone know that we are closing the doors here at Discrimination and Disadvantage. Thanks to all of the readers who have been interested in the blog over the years. Kevin, Shelley, and I appreciate your time and support. I also owe a huge debt of gratitude to Shelley for doing such an amazing job running this blog for the past few years. She's really done a great service to the discipline. So, please join me in thanking her for her tireless efforts. Luckily, Shelley is using this opportunity to launch a new blog entitled Biopolitical Philosophy (with Melinda C. Hall). They plan to build upon and extend the important work Shelley has done here at D & D. So, definitely check out their new enterprise! In the meantime, I will leave this blog online so all of the content is preserved (although comment threads will be closed and no new posts will appear). Let this be a time capsule for the status of disability of philosophy for the past few years! Thanks again and take care...

Ring In The New Year With BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY!tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a01901e204628970b022ad3a94bc3200d2018-12-23T10:14:34-05:002018-12-23T10:14:34-05:00I would like to wish all the wonderful readers and listeners of the Discrimination and Disadvantage blog a Very Happy New Year! I sincerely hope that the New Year will provide all of you with adequate food, shelter, clothing, love, and friendship, abundant philosophical mentoring and inspiration, as well as...Shelley Tremain

I would like to wish all the wonderful readers and listeners of the Discrimination and Disadvantage blog a Very Happy New Year!

I sincerely hope that the New Year will provide all of you with adequate food, shelter, clothing, love, and friendship, abundant philosophical mentoring and inspiration, as well as renewed determination for resistance and rebellion.

I would also like to thank Thomas Nadelhoffer and Kevin Timpe who, in January 2015, invited me to contribute to Discrimination and Disadvantage, a blog that they planned to initiate.

My experience as a contributor to and coordinator of Discrimination and Disadvantage has been immensely rewarding personally, offering an immediate public outlet for my philosophical views on disability and other apparatuses, motivating my commentary on the profession, and enabling me to remain connected to the philosophical community throughout precarious times.

I believe, furthermore, that my writing at Discrimination and Disadvantage has provided an important professional service, exploring previously unexamined lines of inquiry in philosophy, shining a spotlight on disabled and other marginalized philosophers, and drawing attention to structural inequalities within philosophy that have been obscured and neglected.

Now, on the eve of 2019, I am thrilled to announce that in early January Melinda Hall and I will launch an exciting new blog called BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY.

BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY will aim to:

provide up-to-date information and cutting-edge critical analysis of biopolitical asymmetries and other mechanisms and effects of power in philosophy and beyond, especially with respect to (the apparatus of) disability and racism against the abnormal;

showcase the insights of members of underrepresented constituencies in philosophy and the work of marginalized areas of specialization in the discipline;

advertise CFPs and other notices about publications, conferences, workshops, institutes, and other projects pertinent to underrepresented philosophers and subordinated areas of philosophical inquiry;

offer a venue for disabled and other underrepresented and marginalized philosophers to gain the experience and skills required to both engage in philosophical discussion and contribute to the profession of philosophy more generally.

Beginning in January, BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY will be the new home of Dialogues on Disability, the acclaimed series of interviews that I am conducting with disabled philosophers. I have a fabulous line-up of interviewees for the months ahead.

Melinda and I hope that you will join us at BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY to forge an innovative path of philosophical critique, resistance, and insurrection.

Until then, Happy New Year!

Shelley Tremain

Prestige Bias in Canadian Philosophy Departmentstag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a01901e204628970b022ad3829378200c2018-12-20T08:57:38-05:002018-12-20T13:08:26-05:00Discussions about underrepresentation and diversity in philosophy tend to cover over how the factors that influence the demographics of the profession at large can vary, in some cases quite dramatically, from one geopolitical arena to another. In previous posts (for example, here), I have drawn attention to how underrepresentation of...Shelley Tremain

Discussions about underrepresentation and diversity in philosophy tend to cover over how the factors that influence the demographics of the profession at large can vary, in some cases quite dramatically, from one geopolitical arena to another.

In previous posts (for example, here), I have drawn attention to how underrepresentation of certain constituencies is produced in Canadian philosophy departments, in part because many philosophers (including many Canadian philosophers) seem to take for granted that the situation of groups underrepresented in U.S. philosophy departments and the strategies developed to ameliorate this state of affairs in the American context can be straightforwardly implemented as a template for diversity work in the philosophical communities of other countries.

In a provocative post, Helen De Cruz demonstrated that prestige bias largely determines hiring decisions in U.S. philosophy departments at present, pointing out (among other things) how this bias exacerbates the biases that members of certain underrepresented constituencies in philosophy already confront.

Prestige bias also significantly influences hiring decisions in Canadian philosophy departments: most of the philosophers hired in Canadian philosophy departments got their degrees from universities in the U.S. In other words, Canadian philosophy departments do not hire philosophers with degrees from most Canadian universities, an important determinant in the homogeneous composition of Canadian philosophy departments.

Philosophers employed full-time in philosophy departments in Canada do what they can to avoid discussion of this way in which prestige bias manifests and is reproduced in the context of Canadian philosophy departments. Understandably so: most of them took their degrees from American universities, Oxford, or Cambridge.

Nevertheless, one Canadian feminist philosopher, Christine Daigle, has repeatedly drawn attention to the ways in which this production and reproduction of prestige bias disadvantages Canadian graduates. In a recent University Affairs article entitled “The Value of Where You Earned Your PhD,” Daigle writes:

In my experience in the humanities, hiring committees are consistently wowed by American degrees, degrees from our own Canadian big-league universities or from some prestigious European universities. I assume that this is how applicants with extremely strong CVs, but from institutions that don’t count as big league, get passed over in favour of candidates from prestigious schools who have much less to boast of in terms of publications or teaching experience.

The assumption that someone with a PhD from a big-name university is a better candidate regardless of their accomplishments begs the question of how we value the PhDs we award at other Canadian universities. I understand how members of hiring committees who have degrees from big-name schools would tend to favour such degrees. They may be attached to their alma mater and overvalue its worth. However, that hiring committees composed of folks with PhDs mostly from non-big-league schools would consistently favour candidates from the big-league schools is mind-boggling to me. Why would they discriminate against their own graduates or graduates from similar schools? What does this say about what they think of their own degrees?

Dialogues on Disability: Shelley Tremain Interviews Damion Kareem Scott Reduxtag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a01901e204628970b022ad3c7f2f4200b2018-12-19T07:23:17-05:002018-12-20T20:06:43-05:00For this forty-fifth installment of the series, I have reposted the fascinating interview that I conducted with Damion Kareem Scott in December 2015. I know that readers and listeners of the series will be delighted to revisit this interview with Damion. The original post of the interview and comments to...Shelley Tremain

For this forty-fifth installment of the series, I have reposted the fascinating interview that I conducted with Damion Kareem Scott in December 2015. I know that readers and listeners of the series will be delighted to revisit this interview with Damion. The original post of the interview and comments to it are here.

I acknowledge that the land on which I sit to conduct these interviews is the traditional territory of the Haudensaunee and Anishnaabeg, covered by the Upper Canada Treaties and directly adjacent to Haldiman Treaty territory. I offer these interviews with respect and in the spirit of reconciliation.

____________________________________________

Hello, I’m Shelley Tremain and I’d like to welcome you to the ninth installment of Dialogues on Disability, a series of interviews that I am conducting with disabled philosophers and post here on the third Wednesday of each month. The series is designed to provide a public venue for discussion with disabled philosophers about a range of topics, including their philosophical work on disability; the place of philosophy of disability vis-à-vis the discipline and profession; their experiences of institutional discrimination and personal prejudice in philosophy, in particular, and in academia, more generally; resistance to ableism; accessibility; and anti-oppressive pedagogy.

My guest today is Damion Kareem Scott. Damion is an adjunct professor in Philosophy and Africana Studies at the City University of New York, a M.A. student in African American Studies at Columbia University, and a Ph.D. student in Philosophy at Stony Brook University. Damion is passionate about music and dance, though he doesn’t dance as much as he once did. Damion enjoys traveling and looks for ways to do so on the cheap. He also enjoys interacting with non-human animals, listening to music, and watching films and loves table tennis.

Welcome to Dialogues on Disability, Damion! You have lived in various parts of the world and you speak multiple languages. So, why don’t we start this interview with your personal history? Please tell us about your background and what it is that brought you to Africana Studies and philosophy.

Sure. I was born in the Bronx, New York City, in the early 1970s. Both of my birth parents are Jamaican nationals who became naturalized U.S. citizens. My early years were characterized by a certain amount of trauma, deprivation, and violence, about which I won’t go into detail. In the mid-1970s, after my parents split up, my father moved back to Jamaica and took me with him. At that time, political violence and gang-related homicides were endemic in Jamaica. My family returned to the U.S. in the early 1980s, first migrating to Chapel Hill and, subsequently, to Dallas. I spent my Christmases and summers in Brooklyn and Miami. My exposure to a lot of difference conditioned some of my values.

These various geographies are crucially different in a number of ways. For instance, the American South was, and continues to be, a region rife with explicit and overt Anti-Black/White Supremacist racism. Dallas lacks population density. Due to these sharp differences of culture and demographics, my family and I experienced direct and targeted racial animosity and violence. This direct and overt racism is, of course, fully compatible with the “institutional” and “structural” manifestations of anti-Black, anti-minority racism in the northern U.S. that have become all-too-familiar aspects of much of contemporary North American culture; that is, one form of this racism reinforces the other form.

I became conscious of America’s racist/racialist obsessions as I started to come into my own as a person. In order to develop my self-identity, I had to deal with instances of violence. I was forced to learn how to defend myself and my sisters, both mentally and physically. That I had to think through, and against, issues of violence at a young age led me to develop a sharper, quicker, and more creative perspective, namely, a philosophical perspective. I would come home and ask how I should respond when some white kid called me a “nigger,” or a “Yankee” or a “foreigner with a funny accent.” I learned how to deal with things in a non-violent way. I fought physically only after all rational (albeit youthful) attempts at persuasion had failed.

Sadly, tragically, there were guns. As a teenager, I witnessed America’s culture of guns all around me, including the phenomenon of young people who came to glorify firearms through family traditions handed down to them, traditions that were anathema to my own familial and cultural values. Despite my loving, caring parents and siblings who had joined the ranks of the “diverse” suburban American middle-class, both nonracial and racially-charged instances of crime and violence happened all around us, as well as to us. I have repeatedly been the target of racial profiling by the police. On a number of occasions, police officers have trained their guns on me. Because of these combined circumstances, I started to think broadly about philosophical notions of personal identity and political solidarity, as well as about issues of race, ethnicity, and inclusive humanity. Little did I know that this thinking would develop into committed projects in academic philosophy and Africana Studies.

As I got older, I began to stand out in school academically. I went to a public high school, although it was a new “magnet” school staffed with caring and well-intentioned teachers. Eventually, I became a National Achievement/National Merit Scholar, winning several academic accolades. I matriculated at New York University in the early/mid-1990s, using a college scholarship (and some student loans!) as the ticket back to my my wider family here in New York. I intended to study physics, musical journalism, or dramatic writing; but I took a philosophy class in my first year and got hooked. I had read a few classics of African-American political and liberational thought in high school—The Prince, Soul on Ice, and The Autobiography of Malcolm X—but not really any other kind of philosophy. I enrolled in an Introduction to Ancient Civilization general studies class that had a large component on Stoic philosophy. Marcus Aurelius gave me a lot to think about, a lot to which I could relate. Although I declared as a dramatic writing and philosophy major, I dropped the dramatic writing double major as a junior and became a physics minor and philosophy major. I had become enthralled with analytical metaphysics at the juncture of philosophy of science.

As an undergraduate, I began my continuing engagement with a certain type of “Continental” philosophy, that is, logical reconstructive type of approaches to Nietzsche, Heidegger, and existential phenomenology, as well as Deleuze, Derrida, and post-structuralist interventions in language and ontology. Professor John Richardson at NYU helped me to formulate my thoughts coherently through engagement with historical figures in post-Kantian Continental Philosophy—especially Nietzsche and Heidegger—in relation to my prior, nascent phenomenology and conceptualizations of difference and deviance. Richardson really encouraged and motivated me to pursue an advanced degree in philosophy. Professors Ed Stein, Paul Boghossian, Marya Schechtman, Sigrun Svavarsdottir, Mary Mothersill, and Galen Strawson also made big impressions on me as an undergraduate. Thomas Nagel was a big influence on the shape of my developing philosophical ideas. He was an incredible teacher. From Nagel’s work and classes, I acquired a broad sense of analytical philosophy. His work seemed more far-ranging than most of the analytic philosophy that I had encountered, instilling in me a sense of how very unorthodox and minority positions could be clearly, yet rigorously, articulated, especially in the philosophy of mind.

My fortunate selection for, and attendance at, two Rutgers Summer Institutes for Underrepresented Groups in Philosophy during the 1990s—first as a student mentee and subsequently as a graduate student mentor—also greatly influenced my philosophical development. The institutes enabled me to learn about the specifically academic aspects of the burgeoning field of Africana Philosophy that I now love. I had returned to academia after roughly a decade away from it because of a shift in my lifestyle due to both the onset of degenerative joint disease and economic hardship. Since my return, I have had the pleasure to work with such fine scholars as Professors Ann O’Byrne, Megan Craig, Ed Casey, Peter Carevetta, Marcellus Blount, Stephen Gregory, Harvey Cormier, and Robert-Gooding Williams.

Your research in African-American aesthetics and artistic history explores the value of art that arises from social and political oppression. How would you describe this research and what motivates you to do it?

I work on ontology and aesthetics, especially ontology and aesthetics that has social and political implications. Naturalistic arguments and positions that have a universal or global scope are persuasive to me. I think that a good way to achieve continuing liberation and increasing equality is indeed to foster understanding of our shared human identity—heavily qualified, of course. Many other philosophers work on these issues and problems, reconciling the realities of black suffering and oppression with a global notion of our shared commonality. Nevertheless, my emphasis on historical objectivity and universality is clearly a minority position amongst minority positions at present.

There’s a rich body of work on Black and Africana aesthetics that intersects issues of social ontology and the politics of race, culture, and ethnicity. Much of this work identifies and clarifies the relationship between personal, subjective, spontaneous creation and the embedded, reflexive aspects of the social, cultural, and historical context of artistic creativity. There is a lot less work on specific relationships of these themes to the future. I think that I have made some progress with respect to Black-Futurist and Africana-Futurist themes in my writing on the conceptual relations and phenomenology of particular oppressed experiences. My work on these themes—including my forthcoming publications and invited presentations—seems to be catching on. In the past couple of years, I’ve given several conference and colloquium presentations on the subject of what is Black about Black Futurism and Afro Futurism. In these presentations, I developed arguments that can be found, historically, in Martin Delaney, Anna Julia Cooper, W.E. DuBois, and Alain Locke and, more recently, in Samuel Delaney, Octavia Butler, SunRa, Juan Atkins, Afrika Bambatta, Jeff Mills, Lewis Gordon, Anthony Appiah, Frank Kirkland, Charles Mills, Lorenzo Simpson, Howard McGary, and Chris LeBron. In sum, I draw on arguments from critical race theory, social ontology, and traditional aesthetics—Goodman, Budd, Danto, Derrida, Deleuze, Alain Locke—to develop my work on Black-Futurist aesthetics.

The common identification between Black people and Africana people is, and will always be, problematic. In part, this identification is an overgeneralization based upon cultural chauvinism and an assumed American or Western Eurocentric viewpoint. Many indigenous people referred to as “Black” within their own cultures are not in fact recent African descendants. On the other hand, from a naturalistic point of view, as best we know, everyone is of African descent, unless the concept of descent is understood in arbitrary or supernatural terms. These critical ideas say a lot about current notions of cultural interpretation and questions of artistic integrity and cultural authenticity. Simply put, we use these types of arguments to talk about possible “dark” perspectives in the future that have little or nothing to do with current ideas about race. Some of the historical references to Blackness refer to oppressed minority people, themes, or positions more broadly, especially in relation to conceptions of darkness and inaccessibility, vagueness, and disability. Africana identity in our particular social-historical context is indeed Black. As a linguistic culture, we can truthfully refer, and importantly trust, the senses of others’ ascriptions of Blackness in relations to Africana identity. However, historically, Blackness has been a far more encompassing idea than is captured in the contingent, historically, and materially conditioned contexts that situate people of recent African descent as the epistemically and socially “darker” perspectives. The voices and the will of the oppressed, the queer, the pained, feminine, the poor, and the disabled attest to this.

In the future, these conceptual identifications can, could, and probably will differ and diverge to such a degree that, in the future, the disabled perspective may be “darker” than the Black perspective in various relational contexts. In the future, there will be a virtual infinity of social categories with which people—that is, intentional beings or subjects—can identify. At present, I can identify with the realities of my social and political categorizations as a person who lacks power, a person who is oppressed: black person, adjunct professor, disabled person, and so on. I can also identify my categorization as someone who shares certain kinds of power and privilege: for instance, I’m male, an American citizen, cis-gendered, and relatively independent. The tensions that many of us feel in terms of the objective relativity and the virtual identification of personal and social identity open up possibilities to think about how to contribute to the moral and political projects of people’s futurist possible transformations, especially (as I have argued) in terms of non-anthropomorphic agency.

Let’s put the future aside, at least for the moment, in order to talk about your past research. When you lived in the U.K., you served as a community mental-health liaison for an influential multi-year NHS project that examined racial categorization in psychopathology. What were the aims and outcomes of this project, both institutionally and for you personally?

Conducted through Kings College Hospital’s Institute of Psychiatry, the Aesop Project (as it was called) examined the role of societal and cultural factors in diagnoses of mental “disorders” and involved six psychiatric hospitals and institutes, as well as thousands of research subjects. In the U.K., first generation Afro-Caribbean British people were—and, I assume, still are—diagnosed with schizophrenia and related mental dysfunction—“pathologies”—on the order of two to eighteen times the rate of members of other ethnic and racial groups. Twin sibling studies failed to describe any appreciable genetic-dispositional probabilities related to this phenomenon, as did most of the exclusionary, reductive neurological models. The project aimed to provide both an explanatory and clinically valuable framing of these diagnostic anomalies. The leading hypothesis was that the high rates of diagnoses for Afro-Caribbean people were due to implicit biases on the part of psychiatric clinicians, that is, the claim was that white British psychiatrists were over-diagnosing and “medicalizing” deviance in this population as an objective, context-free dysfunction. With that suspicion in mind, teams of social psychiatrists, psychologists, epidemiologists, and clinical ethicists initiated the project. In part, they hoped to increase the cultural sensitivity of clinical training and practice through a transformed understanding of the role of race. Not surprisingly, the research identified factors such as underemployment and early parent-child separation as large probability factors in the first-generation Afro-Caribbean-British demographic.

I worked on the front lines as a low-level researcher and community liaison. I went into the community to recruit so-called healthy people used in control groups for the purposes of comparison with the in-patient group. We compared MRIs and answers to extensive, far-ranging questionnaires. The questionnaires were designed to test relative stress levels, self-esteem, self-respect, perception of self-integrity, family histories, feelings of relative social and political empowerment, class identification, vocational aptitude, and attitudes toward social cohesion and cultural assimilation.

Some surprising empirical findings—such as maternal viral infection during the second or third trimester of pregnancies—transcended racial categorization in schizophrenic diagnosis; however, the sociological factors involved such as underemployment, lack of political representation, and perceived social deviation were indeed race specific. One of the philosophically interesting aspects of these studies concerned self-identification and the role of cognition in synthesizing and processing affective extremities. For example, the pathogenesis of schizophrenia is in part related to functional roles of conception of self. If you have a raced conception of self, it will have a meaningful impact on how you process experiences and how you act in social contexts. A more tumultuous or fractious sense of self will lead to what is considered more deviant behavior. So-called ghetto identity or oppressed identity elicits a greater standardization of deviance.

Because my working visa in the U.K. had expired, I left the project before its completion, although I stayed in touch with the researchers for a while and subsequently kept up-to-speed on the resulting research publications. These are some of the practical results from the study: increased hiring of clinicians of Afro-Caribbean descent in the NHS; changes in elements of medical school curriculum in social psychiatric specialization; and policy initiatives to raise the level of employment in Afro-British communities and to reduce stigmatizations of mental health issues. Many important aspects of this type of research could be adapted to North American contexts and indeed used for a more globalist understanding of power dynamics in reflexive social psychological science. A representative publication from the extensive literature derived from the findings is “Social Environment, Ethnicity, and Schizophrenia: A Case-control Study” by Rosemarie Mallett, Julian Leff, Dinesh Bhugra, Dong Pang and Jing Hua Zhao in The Journal of Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology in 2002. Professors Mallet and Leff were my immediate supervisors and the principal investigators of the Aesop Project. The final report of the Aesop Project is entitled Incidence of Schizophrenia and other Psychoses in Ethnic Minority Groups: Results from the MRCAESOP Study.

I have personally witnessed, and I am very familiar with, extreme examples of behavioral and volitional deviance. I find it challenging to attempt to reconcile my cultural experiences with statistical evidence in terms of relative categories of abnormality via both social scientific and philosophical investigation. I have learned to understand myself, and to understand one of “my” cultures, both objectively and empirically, in addition to thinking about it critically and philosophically. Melanie Klein, Michel Foucault, Franz Fanon, Thomas Szaz, Bill Fulford, Derek Bolton, and Kathryn Tabb are philosophers of psychiatry who come to mind in this more robustly philosophical sense.

Damion, although you do not explicitly situate your philosophical research within philosophy of disability and disability studies, you maintain that your identification as disabled informs your research and your overall outlook. Please explain how disability conditions your research and overall perspective.

I’m interested in theorizing, critiquing, and understanding naturalism, objectivity, difference, universality, and deviance. I’m fascinated by the developing fields of philosophy of disability and disability studies. You have made such important advancements in these areas of research, Dr. Tremain. I am learning from philosophers who work in these areas, as well as thinking about ways to tie what I have learned in the areas to issues of Black Futurism, Afro Futurism, and the ontology and semantics of art and of oppression, in general. Professor Eva Kittay, who is at one of my current institutions, has been a shining example of the power and elegance of philosophical understanding of disability. Although I have not had formal instruction with Kittay, I have had the benefit of brief informal conversations with her about her work.

As I mentioned, I have degenerative joint disease, which has progressed over the past five years and causes pain, stiffness, and swelling in several of my joints. When the flare-ups are acute, I have difficulty walking and typing, so I use voice-recognition software. As a part-time lecturer and part-time graduate student, I haven’t had the financial resources or the institutional support to get the assistance that I have needed. But I have labored on, and luckily enough, many colleagues and instructors have been supportive and kind, encouraging me to continue, which has enabled me to be in a position in which I can do research and teach and write productively. Given my daily pain and disability, I couldn’t have accomplished what I have done thus far without a supportive community.

My experience of disability has motivated me to think about practical ways in which to assist other people. When I feel the pain of flare-ups, the exhaustion due to lack of sleep, and the inability to focus due to a combination of both, I try to think about the experiences of people with far more disruptive or severe existences than I have. My transition to disabled identity has opened up a range of possibilities of thought that, although at times trying, has filled my life with resilience in ways similar to the resolve that my personal and familial overcoming of racist ignorance, violent experiences, and adulthood poverty has given to me. The experience of disability has given me not only insight into the first-person experience of what it is to have a disability, but also insight into the third-personal conditions of empathy and altruism, as well as various social and institutional engagements with latent and explicit power relations specific to deviant and non-normative phenomenological, physiological, and psychological existence.

How do race and disability condition your experience and status as an adjunct faculty member?

When I was hired in the Department of Philosophy at CUNY, I considered myself lucky. In 2001, when I finished the Master’s degree in Philosophy in London, I explored the possibility of teaching high school in the U.K. I thought that I would need to have a Ph.D. in hand to teach at a community college or a vocational school or the equivalent. I could not stay in the U.K. So I moved to Wuxi, China and started teaching English at a private boarding school. After China, I moved to Japan to continue teaching English. Subsequently, I was hired as an educational counselor. Then, I got hired as an adjunct professor in a vocational school, a Japanese Senmon-Gakuin. That was my first job with the title of “professor.” Building on that experience, I eventually got hired as an adjunct professor at a community college back home in New York.

The initial onset of my degenerative joint disease was extremely painful and physically limiting. After a few months, it was quite difficult to walk, never mind to exercise and dance. My life changed dramatically and very rapidly. On top of that, just before the adjunct gig, the economy collapsed and I got laid off from my job as an English teacher. Things got to a point at which I sought Federal disability status. My application for Federal disability status was rejected. Through a separate program, however, I got status as a disabled person from the City of New York. That disability status enabled me to enroll in a city physical therapy program. Although the physical therapy was very helpful, my unemployed status was not. So, I decided to go back to graduate school. I certainly wanted to get a Ph.D., but I also went to grad school because I needed the student loan money. Luckily, a CUNY philosophy professor who knew me from conferences and colloquiums over the years recommended me for a job as an adjunct professor in the department that he had previously chaired. I submitted my C.V. and then waited for an employment decision through the summer of 2012. I got hired a few days before CUNY classes started, was given a full schedule of three classes with sample syllabi, and the department chair wished me “Good Luck.” In short, I was thrown into the deep end. I had about 90 students. At the same time, I started a new graduate program.

My students are unaware of my disability, unless I have strong flare-ups, or unavoidably limp, or massage my joints absentmindedly. I was, and I am, expected to perform to the same standards as nondisabled people. I had, and continue to have, difficult and inconvenient schedules, with classes spread throughout the week. My disability isn’t taken into consideration. I have come to realize that, in general, people like me who have chronic invisible disabilities are expected to deal with their circumstances in silence. Since I came to this realization, I have done what I can to highlight the importance of the project of raising awareness of people with invisible disabilities.

At times, adjunct teaching is extremely difficult. The amount of work that we do, for the degrading salary that we receive, borders on the hellish. If I teach three classes per semester, I live around the poverty line. If I teach only one or two classes, it’s nearly impossible to pay rent and eat, much less focus on my own research. I need to invest so much energy and time outside the classroom that it is too difficult to look for another position. The mobility issues compound these problems. But, I love teaching and I’m very passionate about philosophy. I look forward to taking up my N.Y. State Turner Fellowship in the fall of 2016 at Stony Brook University. I will no longer need to depend on adjunct teaching, with its lack of job security. I urge other disabled philosophers who are only part-time to attempt to forge supportive communities amongst ourselves and with understanding nondisabled fellow academics. We will flourish if we can support ourselves, if we share, help each other, and find a supportive community.

What resources would you recommend to people who wish to learn more about African-American aesthetics?

There is a growing number of sources, including: The Companion to African American Philosophy edited by Tommy L. Lott and John Pittman; The Black Atlantic by Paul Gilroy; and Hip Hop Philosophy by Tommie Shelby, William Irwin, and Derrick Darby. I recommend that people who want to explore the foundations of African-American aesthetics look for the work of DuBois, Alain Locke, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, and Toni Morrison. On the subject of Afro-Futurist and Black-Futurist aesthetics and art, I would recommend James Hale, Reynaldo Anderson, Rasheeda Phillips, Ytasah Womack, Lorenzo Simpson, Harvey Cormier. For work in contemporary Africana aesthetics, I would recommend Kristie Dotson, Leonard Harris, Clyde Taylor, Richard Schusterman, Tommie Shelby, Gerald Early, Denise James, Robert-Gooding Williams, and Lewis Gordon.

Thank you for inviting me to be interviewed. I would also like to convey my gratitude to Dr. Christine Young for her assistance with this interview.

Damion, thank you very much for your incredibly interesting, pointed, and thought-provoking remarks. Your interview is another valuable contribution to the Dialogues on Disability series.

Readers/listeners are invited to use the Comments section below to respond to Damion Kareem Scott’s remarks, ask questions, and so on. Comments will be moderated. As always, although signed comments are encouraged and preferred, anonymous comments may be permitted.

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Please join me in the New Year on Wednesday, January 16th at 8 a.m. EST for the forty-sixth installment of the Dialogues on Disability series and, indeed, on every third Wednesday of the months ahead. I have a fabulous line-up of interviews planned. If you would like to nominate someone to be interviewed (self-nominations are welcomed), please feel free to write me at s.tremain@yahoo.ca. I prioritize diversity with respect to disability, class, race, gender, institutional status, culture, age, and sexuality in my selection of interviewees and my scheduling of interviews.

Draft Introduction to Microaggressions and the Apparatus of Disabilitytag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a01901e204628970b022ad3c7581a200b2018-12-16T12:16:38-05:002018-12-20T20:04:33-05:00Friends of the blog might be interested in listening to/reading the introduction to a draft chapter that I have written on disability and microaggressions. The chapter is forthcoming in a Routledge collection on microaggressions and philosophy. Microaggressions and the Apparatus of Disability by Shelley Tremain Introduction Any given position on...Shelley Tremain

Friends of the blog might be interested in listening to/reading the introduction to a draft chapter that I have written on disability and microaggressions. The chapter is forthcoming in a Routledge collection on microaggressions and philosophy.

Microaggressions and the Apparatus of Disability

by

Shelley Tremain

Introduction

Any given position on microaggressions relies upon certain assumptions about power, including assumptions about what power is, the scope of it, and how it operates. Indeed, presuppositions about power condition any given understanding of the epistemological and ontological status of microaggressions, that is, condition understandings about what microaggressions are, how they can be identified, how inquiry into them should proceed, and the nature of their relation to other more encompassing forms of power. Insofar as philosophical investigations into microaggressions involve these sorts of analyses of power, such inquiries run counter to the theoretical endeavors and dominant self-representations of the tradition of Western European philosophy, a philosophical tradition that continues to function largely under the guise of objectivity, disinterested rationality, and neutrality. Philosophers who aim to challenge the allegedly objective, disinterested, and value-neutral character of (Eurocentric) philosophy take relations of power as the very starting point of inquiry, investigating the ways that power relations have contributed to the constitution of Western European philosophy, that is, have contributed to the constitution of the questions posed within this tradition of philosophy, by whom they have been posed and how, as well as whose responses to the questions posed are seriously entertained and why (see Mills 1997; Harding 2015; Whyte 2016; Dotson 2012; Haslanger 2012; Tremain 2015, 2019).

Critical inquiry with respect to disability has made significant inroads into every discipline of the humanities and social sciences except philosophy, where such inquiry remains severely marginalized, a state of affairs that should be attributed to a complicated set of interrelated factors, including the historical composition and demographics of professional philosophy itself; the narrowing concentration of the prevailing subject matter and techniques of philosophy; the increasingly close association between philosophy and the sciences; and the otherwise limited theoretical, discursive, and political focus of much philosophy. The assumption that disability is most appropriately and adequately addressed in the domains of medicine, the life sciences, and related fields has shaped philosophy departments, influencing hiring practices and decisions, as well as course curricula, conference lineups, involvement in professional networks, membership on editorial boards, the contents of edited collections, and so on (see Tremain, 2017; also see Tremain, 2013, 2014, 2015). Thus, the assumption that disability is a philosophically uninteresting human characteristic and the underrepresentation of disabled philosophers and continued marginalization of philosophy of disability are mutually constitutive and mutually reinforcing, entangled and entwined.

The aforementioned institutional and structural mechanisms and material effects reproduce and are made possible by the microaggressions and other forms of injustice that disabled philosophers confront in philosophy, marginalizing them within it or excluding them from it entirely. Nevertheless, the distinct mechanisms and techniques that variously produce the exclusion of disabled philosophers (however gendered and racialized) from the profession continue to be largely ignored in discussions about the demographics of the profession, factors such as the segregating conceptual and built environments—including inaccessible conferences, classrooms, lectures, course materials, and workshops—in which the very practice of philosophy takes place, as well as research agendas, arguments, instruments, databases, and influences that revolve around an array of notions that operate to subjugate disabled people, including “normality,” “quality of life,” “well-being,” “natural disadvantage,” “suffering,” "disorder," “death with dignity,” “compensation,” “defect,” “cure,” “pathology,” and “risk.” Insofar as claims according to which disabled people are (for example) “abnormal,” “defective,” “worse off,” “permanently dependent,” and “losers in the natural lottery” continue to be both articulated and taken seriously as candidates for theoretical endorsement within a variety of subfields of philosophy, it is unsurprising that disabled people are not regarded as viable colleagues in the profession, nor considered worthy of the role of “professional philosopher,” as the low representation of disabled philosophers in the profession vividly demonstrates (see Tremain 2017, 2014). To put it directly, much of the very subject matter of philosophy is incompatible with efforts to increase the representation of disabled people in the profession. A philosopher of disability who examines the production of microaggressions in philosophy must take account of this state of affairs.

Although I have done extensive analysis of the grievous underrepresentation of disabled philosophers in the profession and the virtual exclusion of philosophy of disability from the discipline (for example, Tremain 2013, 2014, 2015, 2017), I have not thus far used the term microaggressions to identify and refer to the injustices that disabled philosophers (and disabled philosophers of disability in particular) encounter in philosophy. In this chapter, however, I closely consider the relations between microaggressions, philosophy, and disability, a heretofore unexamined area of inquiry. To date, that is, very little work has been done on microaggressions and disability, especially in philosophy whose practitioners almost universally continue to uncritically assume the dominant individualized and medicalized conception of disability in the terms of which disability is a transhistorical defect, a deleterious natural human trait or characteristic, a prediscursive biological flaw that exists prior to social power and practices. Given the prevalence in philosophy of this individualized and medicalized conception of disability and, furthermore, insofar as philosophers and theorists who write about microaggressions generally understand them to be expressions or manifestations of power relations, few philosophers have examined how philosophical assertions about microaggressions are pertinent to disability nor, alternatively, have they considered how analyses of disability could inform philosophical understandings of microaggressions. By contrast, my argument in this chapter assumes that disability is a naturalized apparatus of power (rather than a “natural” human attribute, characteristic, difference, or trait) and, hence, ought to be recognized as an important area of both investigation and insight for philosophical and other theoretical-analytical work on microaggressions.

Let me thus point out that throughout the chapter I use the term apparatus of disability to refer to a heterogeneous and interconnected ensemble of discourses, institutions, scientific statements, administrative measures, and philosophical propositions that responds to the neoliberal requirement of normalization, normalization that facilitates population management and control (see Tremain 2017). An “apparatus,” in the sense in which Michel Foucault (1980) introduced and which I assume, is a historically specific and dispersed system of power that produces and configures practices toward certain strategic and political ends. In other words, to understand disability as an apparatus is to conceive of it as a historically contingent matrix of power that constitutes and is constituted by and through a complex set of technologies, identities, institutions, and discursive practices that emerge from medical and scientific research, government policies and administrative decisions, academic initiatives, art and literature, popular culture, and so on. Although most philosophers of disability argue that disability is a form of social disadvantage imposed upon certain people who embody or possess allegedly natural and politically neutral “impairments,” I maintain that the supposedly natural impairment from which disability—as a form of social disadvantage—purportedly follows is itself a naturalized mechanism of the apparatus of disability. In short, (the apparatus of) disability is a historically contingent and culturally specific matrix of power all the way down and impairment is its naturalized foundation whose incremental production is camouflaged in order to ensure its identification as natural. As a far-reaching matrix of power, furthermore, the apparatus of disability contributes to, is inseparable from, and reinforces other apparatuses of force relations, such as settler colonialism, white supremacy, gender, and class.

My discussion in the chapter is designed to show that Foucault’s claims about power provide an alternative approach to understanding the epistemological and ontological character of microaggressions than the accepted understanding of them provides, an approach that circumvents criticisms directed at claims about their causation. In particular, this alternative approach to microaggressions is not susceptible to criticisms directed at the contestable psychological phenomena to which most current accounts of microaggressions appeal. For this alternative approach construes microaggressions as intentional and nonsubjective tactics of power. The microaggressions directed at disabled people are thus intentional and nonsubjective tactics produced by and through the apparatus of disability, tactics which enable its reproduction. In order to unfold this alternate argument, I first provide a summary of how microaggressions are currently conceptualized in the relevant literature, offering examples of ableist microaggressions in philosophy that the apparatus of disability generates and by and through which it is reconstituted. Then, I point out some of the central ways that claims about microaggressions have been criticized. In turn, I explain how an alternative approach to microaggressions that construes them as practices (tactics)—rather than, say, the consequences of implicit biases—avoids these criticisms and, in any case, provides a more astute account of how power operates with respect to microaggressions than any other account that has thus far been associated with them.

APA Symposium on Foucault and Feminist Philosophy of Disabilitytag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a01901e204628970b022ad3a570cc200d2018-12-06T09:18:44-05:002018-12-06T11:02:03-05:00The draft program for the upcoming Pacific APA meeting in Vancouver (April 17th-20th, 2019) went online last week. The symposium on Foucault and Feminist Philosophy of Disability is scheduled for Thursday, April 18th, 1-4 p.m. The symposium is co-sponsored by the APA Committee on the Status of Women in Philosophy...Shelley Tremain

The draft program for the upcoming Pacific APA meeting in Vancouver (April 17th-20th, 2019) went online last week. The symposium on Foucault and Feminist Philosophy of Disability is scheduled for Thursday, April 18th, 1-4 p.m. The symposium is co-sponsored by the APA Committee on the Status of Women in Philosophy and the Society for Philosophy and Disability.

To increase the accessibility of the session, we (i.e., the participants in the session) have decided upon the following: We will use CART (communication access real-time translation) throughout the presentations and question-and-answer/discussion portion of the session. (Learn more about CART here.) Our session will also include an intermission. Most of the last hour of the symposium will be devoted to the Q&A/discussion. The symposium will be published in a forthcoming issue of Feminist Philosophy Quarterly which we hope will go online relatively soon after the conference.

Not Really Just Wordstag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a01901e204628970b022ad3c30cfa200b2018-11-27T07:59:12-05:002018-12-06T14:07:24-05:00“The community of philosophers, including feminist philosophers, needs to take responsibility for the ableism of philosophical practice.” Over the course of the past weekend, a discussion about ableist language took place on my Facebook page. In the original post on which the discussion ensued, I indicated that I have felt...Shelley Tremain

“The community of philosophers, including feminist philosophers, needs to take responsibility for the ableism of philosophical practice.”

Over the course of the past weekend, a discussion about ableist language took place on my Facebook page. In the original post on which the discussion ensued, I indicated that I have felt increasingly compelled to respond somehow to the ableism that a number of nondisabled philosophers are producing in their work, especially given that some of this work gets a lot of attention from other (non-mainstream) philosophers, is taught to students, and has to some extent set parameters of discussion about diversity in certain venues.

During the past week in particular, as I explained in the Facebook post, I have wrestled with myself about the appropriate mode in which to broach the matter: Should I write a blog post on the subject? Should I put a post about the situation on Facebook? Should I write a journal article about it? Should I try (again) to contact some of the philosophers in question by email?

Several disabled and nondisabled philosophers on my Facebook page took part in the discussion, though I think that, algorithms notwithstanding, many philosophers (and others) on my Facebook page read the discussion as it unfolded. A few nondisabled philosophers encouraged me to write a blog post that provides specific details about ableist language, what it is, its constitutive effects, and so on.

In one comment on the post, Ray Aldred, a disabled philosopher and contributor to Discrimination and Disadvantage, underscored that ableism is ubiquitous in philosophy and that disabled philosophers who aim to resist and undermine it must choose when and where to put their efforts, with the knowledge that most of their attempts to counter ableism and educate other philosophers about how it is reproduced, the forms that it takes, and what can be done to counter it will generally meet resistance of another kind, resistance of an unflinching kind, a resolute, unapologetic, and unaccountable resistance.

Jen Scuro suggested that I take Sara Ahmed’s remarks about “complaint” as a springboard from which to approach the matter, drawing out the burdens that accrue to the complainant in situations in which asymmetrical relations crystallize and have been contested, as well as how distinct institutional and systemic mechanisms reconfigure challenges to accepted practices as complaints, that is, as complaints of a certain kind, namely, as shrill, as idiosyncratic, as illegitimate, negligible.

In another comment on the post, Sally Haslanger offered to contact the philosophers whose work concerned me, to “call in” to these philosophers, to broach the subject with them, pointing out that often the message of allies can be received less defensively than protestations from an aggrieved party.

I considered the comments by Ray, Jen, and Sally, as well as other engaged comments made on the post and additional options suggested in messages sent privately. At the end of the day, however, I felt compelled to write this blog post because I believe that the production of particular instances of ableism in philosophy should be understood as I identify them in the sentence at the top of this post (which, incidentally, ended one of my Facebook comments), namely, as outcomes of the ableism of the wider philosophical community, something for which the community at large should be accountable in some way. For community-wide or, if you prefer, profession-wide, mechanisms that the apparatus of disability has produced and continues to reproduce are constitutive of the violence of ableism and ableist language in philosophy.

Despite the activism and writing about ableist language in philosophy (and ableism in philosophy more generally) that I have done over the course of many years (and that philosophers of disability such as Jen and Melinda Hall do now), two of the philosophers whose work troubles me use very explicit forms of ableist language in very public forums.

How is this (re)production of ableist language possible? Or to put it more directly, how has the philosophical community made possible these very public productions of ableist language?

A partial answer to these questions is surely that the community of philosophers has not objected to the ableist practices of the philosophers in question, but rather has disregarded (or perhaps failed to recognize) their use of ableist language in order to commend other aspects of their work, perhaps thinking that the work is so commendable, that in virtue of this merit, the ableist language employed is somehow nullified or rendered innocuous.

Certainly, the philosophers whose work concerns me in this post can look around the profession and see ableist language implemented virtually everywhere. Indeed, not a week goes by in which I don’t read ableist language at Daily Nous or the Feminist Philosophers blog, in reader comments, in CFPs posted on the latter, and in these blogs' posts themselves, as well as in other philosophical venues on social media, in journal articles, and so on. In effect, the philosophers in question seem merely to have incorporated the community indifference and ableist exceptionism that contribute to the reproduction of the apparatus of disability by and throughout philosophy.

For the persistent indifference to ableism and the inclination to depoliticize disability, both of which run amok in the profession, have effectively given philosophers permission to neglect the research and writing that I and others have done on ableist discursive practices; that is, the philosophical community has condoned the (re)production of ableist language, including in ostensibly transformative discussions regarded as exemplary of the sort of work that philosophers should produce and teach.

For quite some time now, I have been very concerned that the philosophical community has implicitly conveyed the message that use of the term unmute to refer to acts of resistance, practices of liberation, forms of recognition, and so on is philosophically appropriate and politically acceptable.1 Thus, I want to point out that the term mute is ableist, oralist, and derogates Deaf people and other people who are nonverbal. The correlative term unmute is likewise ableist, oralist, and devalues these populations insofar as it too assumes that speaking and hearing are fundamental, natural human “capacities,” that linguistic and auditory practices are the fundamentally necessary and quintessential vehicles of human emancipation, self-realization, flourishing, and so on.2

I am in fact deeply troubled that the ableism of this naturalized conception of speaking and hearing has conditioned a major project in philosophy, is evoked in the moniker of the project, and has been uncritically endorsed in corners of the profession that take themselves to be (among other things) expanding the horizons of the discipline and profession. Needless to say, I am also deeply troubled that this conception implicitly conditions a forthcoming publication that is guaranteed to reach a wide readership.

I should emphasize that I do not hold Myisha Cherry, the author of the project, ultimately responsible for this situation (though I encourage Cherry and other philosophers involved in the project to familiarize themselves with philosophical and other theoretical work on ableist language and ableism more generally). To the contrary, I think rather that, with few exceptions, the philosophical community has enabled and encouraged Cherry to configure and reconfigure a very public project in a way that ought to be recognized as politically compromised and epistemically misleading.

I submit that insofar as every citation of the project and forthcoming book will, in their current configuration, be a microaggression against Deaf and otherwise disabled people, the onus for these microaggressions lies with the philosophy profession at large. Hence, I want to encourage the well-positioned philosophers who have taken part in the project to reflect upon the deleterious effects of what they have helped to create and how these effects will in turn produce unfortunate effects of their own. Perhaps, then, some of these philosophers will urge Cherry to reconsider the current configuration of the project while opportunity remains to do so.

In the heated discussions that comprise what has variously been referred to as the Hypatia affair or the Tuvel affair, some feminist philosophers seemed to show no restraint with respect to their use of ableist language and seemed more than willing to ignore the ways in which other feminist philosophers who advanced convictions like their own appealed to ableist language to do so, demonstrating once again that most nondisabled (feminist) philosophers do not regard disability in political terms, that is, do not understand disability as a politically generated construct as they understand gender, race, sexuality, nationality, and class (among other apparatuses). At one point during the months in which the discussions took place, I was so disheartened by the extent to which some feminist interlocutors involved in them employed disability as a rhetorical device in their assertions that I wrote a blog post that draws attention to the ableist language to which a number of them appealed in a distinct way.

I recently remembered that blog post when I read Robin A. Dembroff’s new article in Aeon and watched as quite a few feminist philosophers and other members of the philosophical community overlooked (or failed to recognize) the use to which Dembroff puts ableist language and ableist metaphor in the article, as well as how these feminist philosophers neglected to point out to Dembroff that these discursive practices have unseemly effects.

Does the value derived from cutting-edge arguments about gender neutralize or render insignificant the detrimental character of appeals to ableist language in which the argumentative claims may be embedded? I sincerely hope that philosophers will decide that it does not. I also sincerely hope that the (feminist) philosophers who vowed to teach Dembroff’s interesting article in their respective feminist philosophy courses will make space in their lectures and seminars on it for a discussion of, among other things, the apparatus of disability and politics of representation, ableism in feminist philosophy, and our dear friend, intersectionality.3

3. For an extended examination of these and other topics pertinent to feminist philosophy of disability, see Shelley L. Tremain,Foucault and Feminist Philosophy of Disability. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2017. Chapter one includes a discussion of the use of ableist language in philosophy and in particular the use of blindness as metaphor in philosophy. I also discuss the use of ableist language in philosophy in "Introducing Feminist Philosophy of Disability."Disability Studies Quarterly 33 (4), 2013 and in other places cited in my book and the aforementioned article.

posted by Shelley

Dialogues on Disability: Shelley Tremain Interviews Gina Eickerstag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a01901e204628970b022ad3a132e4200d2018-11-21T07:12:32-05:002018-12-06T14:08:04-05:00Hello, I’m Shelley Tremain and I’d like to welcome you to the forty-fourth installment of Dialogues on Disability, the series of interviews that I am conducting with disabled philosophers and post here on the third Wednesday of each month. The series is designed to provide a public venue for discussion...Shelley Tremain

Hello, I’m Shelley Tremain and I’d like to welcome you to the forty-fourth installment of Dialogues on Disability, the series of interviews that I am conducting with disabled philosophers and post here on the third Wednesday of each month. The series is designed to provide a public venue for discussion with disabled philosophers about a range of topics, including their philosophical work on disability; the place of philosophy of disability vis-à-vis the discipline and profession; their experiences of institutional discrimination and personal prejudice in philosophy, in particular, and in academia, more generally; resistance to ableism, racism, sexism, and other apparatuses of power; accessibility; and anti-oppressive pedagogy.

I acknowledge that the land on which I sit to conduct these interviews is the traditional territory of the Haudensaunee and Anishnaabeg, covered by the Upper Canada Treaties and directly adjacent to Haldiman Treaty territory. I offer these interviews with respect and in the spirit of reconciliation.

My guest today is Gina (Gen) Eickers. Gina is currently finishing their Ph.D. at the Berlin School of Mind and Brain and Freie Universitaet Berlin. Their research concentrates on social interaction and emotional display, developing an account of social interaction in their dissertation that focuses on contextual aspects of it. While Gen has been preoccupied with work on their dissertation in the last couple of months, with little time for anything else, they actually enjoy solitary activities like reading (they are currently catching up on LGBTQ history) and engaging in art in all kinds of ways. In the last three years, they have organized three art events.

Welcome to Dialogues on Disability, Gina! You grew up in a small town in southern Germany and initially studied to become a high school teacher. Please tell us about your background and how you found your way to a Ph.D. program in philosophy.

Thank you for having me, Shelley!

Yes, I grew up in a small village in southern Germany, which has a population of 2,500. Southern Germany is quite Catholic and ninety-nine percent white. The area in which I grew up is very conservative. In addition to this already conservative environment, in the few last years, right-wing attitudes have come to the surface again, perhaps even increased. In the 2017 election, fifteen percent of voters in the area in which I grew up voted for the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), the right-wing political party in Germany. Around thirty-eight percent voted for the Christian party, whose values are far from trans-friendly, queer-friendly, immigrant-friendly, or disability-friendly.

These election results put this region above the national averages with respect to the votes that right-wing parties received. What is important to add here, of course, is that in Berlin, my chosen home, around twelve percent of voters voted for the AfD. The difference between fifteen percent and twelve percent may not seem that big when we look at the number in isolation. But it’s significant when we consider that far fewer people in Berlin voted for the Christian party, and far more people voted for the left party. Most importantly, the queer community, the queer scene in Berlin is big, supportive, and good at resistance. No such thing existed in the area in which I grew up. None of this means that twelve percent of voters is not already bad enough though.

My grandparents used to have a farm, and I spent some of my childhood sitting on a tractor with my grandfather. I value these memories. At the same time, though, due to the conservative environment of southern Germany, life felt repressed and depressing there. Feelings, social issues, gender, disability were just not topics to be discussed. Everything that seemed to be remotely odd or that departed from accepted norms was ignored or simply not talked about—but, in an effortless kind of way; I think people just had no language for, nor idea of how to deal with, anything other than what is taken as normal.

When my parents got divorced, people talked badly about them and they lost friends. In high school, I knew only one other person who had divorced parents. When I was in high school, there were rumors that two of our male teachers were gay and that one of my male classmates was gay. Nothing was overt, but the things said about the teachers and the classmate were awful and, now that I have come to realize my own trans gay identity, are painful for me to think back on.

Gender was simply not a thing—it still isn’t there, I think. It was so not on the table ever that I am not sure how to express the non-existence of thoughts or conversations about gender. I think Germans, in general, are not the best when it comes to emotion work or communicating their problems, feelings, and needs, which even manifests in how language is used: where Americans would say “amazing!!!”, my relatives would say “not too bad.”

For historical and cultural reasons, rural areas in Germany, in my experience, revolve a lot around survival, work, everyday lives. That is to say that there has not been any room in these regions to openly talk about or even allow oneself to think about aspects of identity, such as gender, sexuality, disability, and race. Everything that goes beyond work and survival appears to be a luxury. But we need to learn that living one’s identity is not a luxury, but rather a necessity.

The conflict between the idea that thinking about identity is a luxury and the idea that thinking about identity is a necessity manifested, for me, in conflicting feelings and values which, I think, have made it difficult, if not impossible, for me to look for support, to ask for help, to come out as trans, to talk about my mental health. Until recently, I despised my background—perhaps for these very reasons and especially due to social pressure—but I have learned to embrace parts of it. I think my background has also equipped me with tools that people from more privileged backgrounds—such as people from academic families—do not have. For example, I can absolutely imagine myself working low-paying jobs and can imagine life not as a fancy university professor.

When I graduated from high school at eighteen, my plan was to study art in order to become an art teacher. I applied to art school, but I was rejected. That was a bummer, but it hasn’t prevented me from continuing to make art and be engaged in art projects. I have curated three exhibitions so far, and I am currently working on a fourth. Two of the exhibitions were art and science collaborations: Embodiments, which took place in 2016 at the Whiteconcepts Gallery in Berlin, and an exhibition for the Visual Science of Art Conference (VSAC) in 2017. Both collaborations have led to interesting conversations between artists and scientists/researchers.

[Description of image below: A group of spectators sits on the floor of the Whiteconcepts Gallery. They are looking up at something out of the view of the shot. Artwork is displayed on the walls of the room, including a large fabric installation on the wall behind the viewers.]

[Description of image below: A shirtless person stands in the Whiteconcepts Gallery holding a phone to their chest, their hands cradling and framing the screen of the phone on which a video of a beating heart during an open-heart surgery is displayed. The displayed heart is the estimated size of the heart of the person holding the phone. Other pieces of art can be seen in the background of the shot.]

In March 2018, I curated the queer film night called Attack On (Your) Patriarchy. Of the exhibitions that I have curated so far, this one is the closest to my heart. Rather than describe the short films that were shown at Attack On (Your) Patriarchy, let me provide the event description, which really sums up the event: “The patriarchy has told you who you are, who you love, and how you should fuck. And you always thought you were not like that. ‘Feminism’ tattooed on the forehead, and yet: marriage, hetero, mono, cis, hyper male. Short films on feminism, queerness, patriarchy.” I am looking forward to organizing the second edition of this event at which other new films will be shown.

[Description of image below: Gen stands on the right of the shot in front of a screen on which the words [DEINE] PATRIARCHIE appear above the words [YOUR] PATRIARCHY. Like the two other people visible in the frame, Gen is looking at something to the left of the shot and smiling widely.]

Philosophy was my second choice, initially. I had ethics as a subject in high school. That included some philosophy, broadly construed, and my teacher was good. But, at the same time, I got the impression that philosophy is all about talking. I’ve never been good at talking or expressing my opinions or interests verbally in a group of people, in a school setting. I have preferred to read on my own, teach myself things, and eventually engage in discussions in more private settings. And, I’ve always preferred writing.

I studied at the University of Stuttgart. Most of the people who study or work in Stuttgart commute up to two hours a day from the countryside. I lived with my mother and two of my siblings in the small village in which I grew up and commuted every day until I got financial education support (half loan) from the state. Due to my experiences of financial and other instabilities in my youth, living as a half-orphan with a single mother who worked two jobs, I could not imagine studying art or philosophy alone; so, I opted for a high school-teacher degree.

At that time, there was a constant lack of teachers in Germany and the pay is decent—certainly more money than I was used to growing up—so pursuing a teaching degree seemed to be a safe and good choice. It just seemed like a proper job for someone of my social status and my gender. In hindsight, I appreciate having studied in the teacher’s track because it gave me the opportunity to study lots of different subjects. I was enrolled in philosophy and political science (major) and English (minor). I also had courses in psychology and pedagogy, which was fun.

My first contact with academic philosophy (outside of classes at university) came when Jesse Prinz visited the University of Stuttgart and gave a workshop there. My professor asked the class, which studied Jesse’s The Emotional Construction of Morals, if anyone wanted to contribute a commentary to his visit. For some reason, I said that I wanted to do so. I should add that I was discouraged from doing so by some people, including some professors. For example, people asked me if I really thought that I could come up with something interesting to say and if I thought that I would be able to speak in front of a group of people. The commentary that I gave went really well and led a postdoc and others to recommend that I do a Ph.D. in philosophy and apply to the Berlin School of Mind and Brain.

When I first looked into what is needed to start doing a philosophy Ph.D. in Germany, I got overwhelmed and initially decided to stay in the high school-teacher track, “where I belong.” Also, I was frankly just too depressed and deprived of any feeling of self to imagine applying for anything, that is, to plan for my future. This feeling re-occurs every time I am required to do anything that is remotely related to future-planning, yes. I have ways to deal with this feeling though and giving up has never been an option for me. I enjoyed writing my M.A. thesis, liked giving a commentary at an academic philosophy workshop, and had more things to say. The combination of these things gave me a sense of control, and, ultimately, have given me back a sense of self.

I ended up at the Berlin School of Mind and Brain to develop my dissertation project on social interaction and emotion. The proposal that got me accepted to the graduate school looks quite different from the final dissertation. I think this is generally the case with dissertation projects. However, the components of the proposal that were important to me have remained. I managed to structure them and elaborate on them in a way that makes sense, not only to me but also to some other people. In the dissertation, I criticize contemporary explanations of social cognition and social interaction, arguing that they tend to ignore norms and power relations inherent in social interaction. I also argue that it is not obvious that we make use of the tools for social cognition that have been developed and investigated so far. In other words, I advance an alternative theory of social interaction by shifting the focus to context, emotions, and, inherently, social norms.

You wrote your M.A. thesis on psychopathology. Please describe this project and your Ph.D. project in more detail.

My M.A. thesis was on psychopathy and moral emotions. The aim was to address the connection between emotions and morality, using psychopaths as an example case, since, according to different philosophical accounts and the official DSM categorization, psychopaths are considered to lack (moral) emotions. I criticized the DSM with respect to the psychopathy categorization, while also pointing to the impossibility of categorizing personality disorders or mental health issues in general. I argued for the following: In psychological science, psychopathy seems to be an unsolved puzzle as it occurs alongside questions about morality and its nature. Psychopaths are assumed to have an emotional deficit, and psychopathy has been repeatedly used as an example case in moral philosophy. The central issue of the thesis was to explain the connection between emotions, morality, and psychopathy. If morality is a matter of emotions, how, the thesis asked, can psychopathy be explained? Furthermore, how is this explanation of the connection between emotions, morality, and psychopathy related to common categorizations?

Towards the end of my M.A., I became more and more interested in how moral norms relate to social norms, as well as how social norms are generated and constructed. Up to that point, I had not encountered philosophical theories about social cognition or social interaction. Like a lot of depressed teens and twenty-somethings, however, I was into Sartre, Camus, Dostoyevsky. I think their writing has impacted my thinking and perhaps even shaped my intuition to find the Theory of Mind discussion pretty alienating. Alienating because so much of the debate has revolved around the biology of social cognition, the way that “healthy” people cognize in social situations—in social situations created in labs, that is. Sartre, Camus, and Dostoyevsky wrote about social situations in different and unusual ways: they wrote about alienation, feeling uneasy in social interactions, subtle aggression, feeling nauseous and anxious.

In my dissertation, I argue that theoretical energies have focused too narrowly on a small range of accounts of social cognition, that these accounts have various limitations, and tend to ignore social context and the influence of social phenomena such as gender, race, and status on social perception. Thus, the dissertation challenges prevailing models of mental-state attribution and advances an alternative to these models by focusing on context.

The alternative is called Scripted Alignment Model (SAM). SAM preliminarily claims that social interactions can proceed without need for mental-state attribution and can do so due to alignment. Alignment is made possible, or rather, is unavoidable, due to social forces, such as social roles and power relations. Social forces are responsible for structuring social interactions by providing implicit, value-based reasons. I argue that scripts are the central tool of SAM by which we can make sense of social interactions. These scripts are, furthermore, context-dependent and context-sensitive knowledge structures that describe roles and situations, for example. Finally, I discuss emotion recognition as a prime case of the newly developed theory (SAM).

Gen, you have not enjoyed graduate school, in part because of institutional and professional expectations that you regard (and I agree) as ableist and classist. How would you describe these expectations? How do they disadvantage some students?

Even though I love learning and reading, I am not much of a school person in general. It is hard for me to follow the rules of a system that does not make sense to me and that I consider to be problematic on different levels. I have always loved learning but have struggled with a lot of the ways in which learning is institutionalized. For example, when I went to high school, our oral performances were graded; so, you were graded on how often you raised your hand in class to say something. My oral grades were terrible because I literally never said anything. That ruined my grades overall, of course.

Grad school has made me feel out of place, incompetent, and stupid many times. It has given me bad episodes of depression, anxiety, and I have experienced impostor syndrome. I had episodes where I kept skipping classes and avoiding everyone. One aspect of my feeling out of place was certainly related to class. For example, most other grad students that I have met in Germany come from academic families and are not first-generation academics. This leads to different expectations regarding money, behavior, looks—pretty much everything. I’ve been told several times that the language that I use is not appropriate for the academic context.

The ableist expectation that one be functional at all times has been a big challenge for me. Another challenge for me has been the classist expectation that one already knows how everything works—for example, how to communicate with your supervisor, how to write proper emails, where to apply for funding, what are appropriate amounts of money to spend for a conference trip, etc. I’ve always wondered how everyone else knows how to do all these things and how to never get in trouble for sending “impolite” emails. I think that this expectation has certainly contributed to my fear of sending emails to anyone or interacting with anyone in academia, really.

Mental health and disability, in general, are still taboo in Germany and German academia in particular. While slowly the (binary) gender pay gap is acknowledged in Germany and German universities have started to hire more women, disability, mental illness, queerness, and race remain largely unaddressed. The first time that I experienced a kind of openness to mental health issues and disability in general was when I came to Berlin. I suppose this is due in large part to the fact that Berlin is a big international city and home to many people who have mental health problems or are disenabled.

Here is an example of the expectation to be functional: you are supposed to attend conferences in their entirety. Some colleagues laugh when you say that you cannot take more than forty percent of the conference. Usually in breaks at conferences or after colloquia, people continue to talk philosophy and discussing ideas. This kind of interaction has always seemed impossible for me. By the time a conference day is over, I have most certainly run out of steam. I am quite sure this exhaustion has to do with the way that conferences are often constructed: talks that are up to ninety minutes long, with tiny breaks in between and on-going discussions in the breaks.

By now, I think that I have developed ways of dealing with these expectations. I don’t attend entire conferences and just don’t tell anyone. I draw during talks or stand up when I get nervous or inattentive. I work at home pretty much always because that’s where I am least distracted (by noises, colleagues, and so on). I ask for help when I need it and try not to think about what people might think of me. If I get a grumpy reply, I explain why I do not understand X and need help regarding X.

You identify as trans/non-binary. What challenges have you confronted in philosophy with respect to this aspect of your identity and how do other aspects of your identity complicate these challenges?

Certainly, coming out as trans (non-binary) to colleagues and other philosophers has been a big deal. Coming out as trans non-binary in general is difficult in Western societies. The German language is incredibly binary gendered, which makes things really difficult. I opted to come out, however, since doing so at least gives me the possibility to express myself properly and to ask people to use my correct pronouns. For me, this option has seemed less painful than hiding my identity.

[Description of image below: Gen is wearing a dark hoodie and holding a camera in their left hand. They seem to be intently listening to or watching someone or something beyond the shot. Their head is tilted slightly to their right and their face is expressionless. Electronic equipment, which appears to be in use, sits on a wooden table in the background of the shot.]

In academia, visibility and accessibility problems for queer and trans people exist too, of course. For example, if I give a talk at a conference, nobody asks me what my pronouns are. Instead, it is made my job to tell people—which is an effort for me, psychologically, and makes me feel inappropriate. Most people end up misgendering me anyways. That is painful and hard to wrap one’s head around. I think one of the most difficult things for me, as a trans non-binary person who struggles with their mental health, is to correct people if they misgender me, to tell cis-hetero people that I am trans and queer, to talk openly about it in general. Social media can be helpful in these respects. Since I prefer to communicate via writing, social media has always helped me talk about things that I cannot (yet) express in person.

I hold academics especially accountable to educate themselves about trans identities and disabilities—and in fact all identities, marginalized groups, and issues of oppression—because academics have ready access to the requisite knowledge to do so or at least to resources that would enable them to acquire the requisite knowledge. It is totally fine for me to explain what non-binary means to someone who doesn’t know, of course. However, I think professors, teachers, conference organizers, and philosophers who speak out publicly (e.g., who get published in newspapers) have a special kind of responsibility, and I hold them accountable for that responsibility. Educating oneself is of course not the whole story, but it is a necessary step and one that is comparably easy to achieve for academics, especially those of us who are in more privileged positions.

Recently, an article appeared in a German newspaper in which a philosopher referred to trans people as “transsexuals” and claimed that victims of oppression victimize themselves. On a well-known philosophy blog, an argument about the “transgender debate” was recently initiated by TERFs (trans-exclusionary radical feminists). Another recent article, although not transphobic, nevertheless debated about the terms of the “transgender debate,” taking seriously the arguments of TERFs. Whenever things like that happen, I feel especially defeated, misplaced in academia and in philosophy, and lose hope in our profession and the people in it, not because most philosophers are transphobic, but rather because the philosophers who are transphobic are especially loud, while the philosophers who are not transphobic have not been loud enough.

A week after one of the most recent public “transgender debate” pieces by philosophers was published, the U.S. government announced that it intends to pass legislation that effectively renders trans people nonexistent. In the U.S., the life expectancy of a trans woman of color is thirty-five. I do not think philosophers can rightly go about debating the lives of trans people. There is nothing that needs to be debated. Trans people are real and valid. Philosophers who think there is something rationally debatable about that or think that the bathroom debate should be taken seriously are contributing to transphobic hate. I should note here that I think that not all philosophers who are trans (and disenabled) agree with me about these debates and their effects. I am giving my personal point of view and do not intend to speak for all trans folks (including all philosophers who are trans). I also want to stress, furthermore, that I strongly believe that there are things that cisgendered people can and should do.

Gen, I’m sure that many readers and listeners of this interview have experienced some of the concerns, discomfort, and doubts that you have, especially if they belong to one or more marginalized groups in philosophy. What philosophical, structural, pedagogical, institutional, and discursive changes do you think would make academia a more hospitable environment for you and others who may share your experiences?

As I indicated in my previous reply, I want to see articles with hateful arguments about trans people, queer people, or, really, any oppressed or marginalized group get called out as such and not taken seriously. I do not believe in undermining hate (speech) from within. But I do believe in undermining hate (speech) by calling it such. For example, I hope trans-exclusivity—and especially the kind of trans-exclusivity covered by “feminism” with arguments for sex/genital-based safe spaces—will soon be recognized and referred to as hate speech. This is something that cis-het feminists could easily do. The responsibility here lies especially with them, since they are, unfortunately, often given more credibility regarding “the transgender debate” than trans people are.

I think a step forward has been made through the creation of MAP (Minorities and Philosophy). The organization and all the MAP chapters are doing great work and working hard on bringing about structural, discursive, and pedagogical changes in philosophy. I believe the work that MAP chapters do should be recognized by institutions, professors, and others who teach philosophy much more than it currently is.

Gen, would you like to make some closing remarks or recommend some books, articles, videos, or music on any of the topics that you’ve discussed in this interview?

I am not a fan of big goodbyes, but let me say: thanks again, Shelley.

And sure, I’ll leave some recommendations here: an article, a collection of poems, a performance, and a song. First, Robin A. Dembroff’s recent article in Aeon. Second, Don’t Call Us Dead by the poet Danez Smith and Smith’s performance of their poem, “Today.” Third, the song “No Good” by the musician Perfume Genius.

Gen, thanks so much for these terrific recommendations. I’ve watched Smith’s performance of “Today” and have been listening to “No Good.” Thanks also for your evocative and instructive remarks throughout this interview. I’ve learned a lot from you and I’m certain that readers and listeners of this interview will too.

Readers/listeners are invited to use the Comments section below to respond to Gina Eickers remarks, ask questions, and so on. Comments will be moderated. As always, although signed comments are preferred, anonymous comments may be permitted.

____________________________________

Please join me here again on Wednesday, December 19th, at 8 a.m. EST, for the forty-fifth installment of the Dialogues on Disability series and, indeed, on every third Wednesday of the months ahead. I have a fabulous line-up of interviews planned. If you would like to nominate someone to be interviewed (self-nominations are welcomed), please feel free to write me at s.tremain@yahoo.ca. I prioritize diversity with respect to disability, class, race, gender, institutional status, nationality, culture, age, and sexuality in my selection of interviewees and my scheduling of interviews.

KCL Minorities and Philosophy welcomes submissions of abstracts for its conference in March 2019.

We invite undergraduate and postgraduate students from UK universities to submit abstracts on subjects related to the theme of "Decolonisation – Shaping and Re-shaping Reality." Submissions from international students are also welcomed, however, we will not beable to fund international travel.

This conference aims to open up questions and provide a platform for critical analysis concerning the underlying assumptions, ideologies,narratives, social structures etc. that are rooted in white colonialism, which have shaped (and continue to shape) reality for a multitude of people. The aim is to re-tell stories where white heterosexual upper-class men are no longer the protagonists, and to think critically about ways to re-shape our present reality in efforts towards decolonisation.

Possible areas include (but are not limited to):- Metaphysics- Epistemology- Philosophy of Race- Political Philosophy- History of Philosophy- Continental Philosophy- Philosophy of Language- Philosophy of Science

We accept submissions from students in a wide-range of disciplines, such as history, geography, anthropology, languages, as well as medicine and the nature sciences.

Abstracts should be no longer than 500 words.Please submit abstracts in PDF format by 15th December 2018 to: mapforthegap.kcl@gmail.com

Please include a separate document in your email with your name and institutional affiliation. We invite you to include any information you would like us to know about yourself, e.g. age, gender, ethnicity, disability, etc.

*Note: the official conference poster on the Facebook page for the conference indicates that December 20, 2018 is the deadline for submission.

posted by Shelley

A Gimlet Eye: The Journal of Controversial Ideas and Jonathan Anomaly’s “Defending Eugenics” (guest post)tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a01901e204628970b022ad3a0cd8c200d2018-11-16T12:59:04-05:002018-12-06T14:10:39-05:00A Gimlet Eye: The Journal of Controversial Ideas and Jonathan Anomaly’s “Defending Eugenics” Guest post by Alison Reiheld* On November 12, a slew of articles hit the internet announcing the formation of Journal of Controversial Ideas, a future journal that will be dedicated to, well, publishing cross-disciplinary controversial ideas and...Shelley Tremain

A Gimlet Eye: The Journal of Controversial Ideas

and Jonathan Anomaly’s “Defending Eugenics”

Guest post

by

Alison Reiheld*

On November 12, a slew of articles hit the internet announcing the formation of Journal of Controversial Ideas, a future journal that will be dedicated to, well, publishing cross-disciplinary controversial ideas and specifically ideas too controversial to be published elsewhere or which, if published elsewhere, would subject the author to threats. That authors might be threatened because of the content of their articles led the editors of the prospective journal (including Peter Singer) to explicitly decide in advance to allow pseudonymous publication.

While philosophers who pay attention to the blogosphere and social media have good reason to worry about the viciousness enabled by anonymity and a total lack of accountability (see Twitter, the metablog, the metametablogs, etc.), anonymity can also protect serious and careful valuable contributions to the profession, as with the “What Is It Like To Be A Woman In Philosophy?” blog and countless other instances. Perhaps the editors, if acting in good faith, hope that peer review and editorial oversight will provide accountability and ensure that the abuses of pseudonymity are curtailed while the benefits of it are in full effect.

In The Chronicle of Higher Education, Tom Bartlett warned of a coming backlash to the journal itself and not just to the kind of content that it wishes to print (“Cue the Outcry”). Why might there be such a backlash? And would it be justified? The tone of “Cue the Outcry” implies that it would not. Whether it would, depends on the new JCI’s editorial procedures, which ideas they find “controversial” enough to merit publication in their journal, whether these ideas include both conservative and liberal ideas, and a whole host of other factors.

My concerns about the journal stem from the kinds of work that authors elsewhere have painted as persecuted. As soon as I heard of the announcement of the journal, I thought in particular of the work of philosopher Jonathan Anomaly, who often says that it is unjust for his talks to be protested, that he receives hate mail in response to his publications, and that the American Academy is badly broken because of the way people respond to his work and the work of others who advance controversial ideas.

I want to propose in this post that some claims are indeed deeply problematic by their nature; thus, it is right and proper to subject them to greater scrutiny than other claims and perhaps to hold them to a higher standard. This discrepancy would make it appear that the former claims are being unjustly discriminated against, when in fact this is not the case. One such claim is that colonialism was morally good and is justified, a claim made in an article published in Third World Quarterly in 2017. Another claim is that we ought to have formal eugenics programs. This latter assertion is one of several interlocking claims advanced by Anomaly.

ZOOMING IN ON A CONTROVERSIAL IDEA

...our imaginative visions are central to our understanding of the world. They are not a distraction from our serious thinking but a necessary part of it. And—what is perhaps more surprising—many of the visions that now dominate our controversies are ones which look as if they were based on science, but are really fed by fantasy… many of the favourite fairy-tales of our age—the myths that actually shape our thoughts and actions—are ones which owe their force to having appeared in scientific dress. —Mary Midgley, The Myths We Live By, xii-xiii

In 2018, Monash Bioethics Review published an article by Anomaly called “Defending Eugenics: From Cryptic Choice to Conscious Selection.” The article is part of a thematically unified research program that Anomaly has developed over the years in which he treats procreation/reproduction as a public good, considering group traits and individual traits as relevant to who should have children. This research program includes, but is not limited to, his 2017 article “Race Research and the Ethics of Belief” in Journal of Bioethical Inquiry and his 2014 “Public Goods and Procreation,” also in Monash Bioethics Review. Related articles include Anomaly’s 2018 “Public Goods and Education” forthcoming in a Rowman & Littlefield anthology on Philosophy and Public Policy. Anomaly develops an interlocking set of claims across this research program which, I believe, I have roughly described as he himself would say is correct. The following are my summaries of the claims made in each of these four articles:

CLAIM (1) FROM “PUBLIC GOODS AND EDUCATION”: While education is a public good, social intervention in public education and intellectual development is often pernicious and government involvement in social factors affecting intelligence is thus often ill-advised, even in the form of public funding for education, vouchers, and especially stipulation of what should be learned.

CLAIM (2) FROM “RACE RESEARCH AND THE ETHICS OF BELIEF”: We rightly worry that any legitimation of claims that certain racial groups are better or worse at certain tasks due to physiology will lead to bias and oppression that can cause harm. But the harm principle is a bad reason not to believe something to be true if there is evidence that it is, and it is an especially bad reason to refrain from looking for any such evidence. “[I]f we allow ourselves to believe a proposition that is contrary to the available evidence, we may end up acting in ways that harm other people as well as ourselves” (Anomaly 2018, 293). Racial groups are genetically real, not just socially constructed, and research into race and shared racial traits should not be inhibited. What’s more, doing such research could help to explain racial prejudice. For instance, Anomaly argues that Ashkenazi Jews simply are, based on scientific evidence, smart and have heritably high IQ scores. Perhaps, Anomaly proposes, the best explanation for how Jewish folks became targeted for their success is that such success is indeed biologically group-based. Acknowledging racial differences as biological and real and heritable, rather than socially constructed, could serve to undermine racial bias, as well as lead to benefits in the treatment of health conditions that occur in some groups more than in others.

CLAIM (3) FROM “PUBLIC GOODS AND PROCREATION”: Economists are wrong when they view children as private goods that parents create for fun, companionship, help in old age, etc. Rather, children are public goods because “they can have far-reaching effects on the genetic composition, cultural trajectory, and general welfare of future people.” (172) Because the benefits of public goods are consumed in common and widely dispersed, and procreation and parenthood are public goods, we are justified in influencing reproductive behavior. While there should be a presumption in favor of procreative liberty, “nearly all of us would prefer—to the extent that it is possible—to create a world in which future people flourish. This will apparently involve preserving (or increasing) the prevalence of traits that can be thought of as public goods.” (179) We should at least use social norms to nudge people to make eugenic reproductive choices. The state could even provide free or reduced cost fetal or parental genetic screening and, with caution, even some restrictive interventions into reproductive choice such as parental licensing and, in some cases, temporary sterilization for the very unfit—”especially if their pathological behavior has a strong genetic component” (184)—which can be reversed in case of a mistaken judgment of lack of fitness. We would be “preventing probabilistic rather than actual harms.” (ibid.) Social efforts to influence reproduction should extend from genetically bad traits, to poor parenting by extremely irresponsible people, to people who might turn out to be poor parents (thus the word probabilistic). We also ought to think of future people as doing probabilistic harm, of “risks that prospective children post to other people.” (ibid.) Anomaly says that this is fairly extreme and that these options should be preserved, but that we should be wary of using coercive state intervention to achieve collective goals. Thus, the “most promising and least intrusive way of preserving the genetic basis of valuable traits may be genetic counseling and—once our understanding of genetics improves—subsidies for those who wish to use embryo selection or, under certain conditions, genetic engineering to enhance their children.” (185) This kind of “voluntary” eugenics should be supported.

CLAIM 4) FROM “DEFENDING EUGENICS…”: Anomaly begins his article by explicitly stating that he wishes to “reclaim the spirit of authors like Francis Galton and Charles Darwin,” and that his defense of eugenics will not commit us to endorsing state-sponsored coercion nor to genetic determinism. He argues, furthermore, that “virtually every trait that influences our personality and our likelihood of living a good life—including intelligence, health, empathy, and impulse control—has a substantial genetic component.” Reacting to the history of Nazis and the Holocaust, and American eugenics, by rejecting the genetic basis of race and other groupings of traits is, he notes, an “understandable over-reaction” to the cruel and racist policies of early and mid-twentieth century eugenicists. One of the problems facing societies is that people who have higher IQs, more education, and higher income have fewer children later in life, especially in developed countries with social supports and opportunities for ambitious and intelligent women. (The trend of successful career women having pets instead of children or adopting children is bad for the gene pool in the long run, and a form of pathological altruism, one example that Anomaly gives of “dysgenic trends in developed countries.”) Anomaly proceeds to defend a series of “plausible” moral principles laid out in the famous case of Buck v. Bell, including preventing the harm that future children of certain people might do to others and society. If we are cautious of state authority and more concerned with individual liberty, we can use these principles as the basis of a “liberal eugenics.” He defends access to contraception (on the grounds that it allows women to choose more carefully who fathers their children), access to genetic education, and genetic counseling through public financing of independent providers in a competitive market, access to genetic engineering as enhancements come on board, and a system of incentives and penalties including parental licensing. He also defends parental licensing on the grounds that traits like impulse control, health, intelligence and empathy have significant genetic components and so unrestricted reproduction entails many “parents who are unwilling or unable to take care of their children” and who “[pass] along an undesirable genetic endowment.” A fair parental licensing scheme would involve criteria that “are effective at screening out only parents who impose significant risks of harm on their children or (through their children) on other people.” If informal sanctions work, they are preferable to coercive laws, but they often fail to work well. While public policies cannot create a genetic utopia, changing reproductive norms can go some way towards making us better at choosing whether to have children and which kinds of children to have. After Anomaly advances this long argument in which he advocates numerous policies and endorses specific views about which traits are desirable, he closes with the following claim: “I concede that I may be wrong about any of the measures I’ve considered. Sometimes the best policy is not to have one."

What shall we make of these claims? At first glance, it might seem that claim (1) is entirely distinct from claims (2), (3), and (4). After all, taken together, the latter set of claims clearly pertains to genetic traits of groups, judging groups’ merits based on their genetics, and intervening in reproductive choice based on genetic merits. Let us take some basic background from disability studies.

A core concept in disability studies is that we can conceive of disability in several ways. We can conceive disability as a biomedical problem, which is resolved by biomedical therapies that either restore function to species normal function or provide cure. Transplants, functionally comparable prosthetics, and medications that affect neurological function fall under this kind of framework. Alternatively, we can conceive of disability as socially constructed, addressing it with adjustments to social structures and our built environment. Providing ramps and elevators in buildings, as well as, or instead of, stairs, making sure microphones are used at conferences, making large-font handouts available at conferences, and so on, are structural and contextual adjustments that fall under this latter kind of framework. Call this the “social model of disability.”

On the social model of disability, a person with the neurological capacities that we might call dyslexia is not at all disabled in a low-or-no-literacy society. But in a society that is highly dependent on complex text for education and for the best jobs, dyslexia can be quite disabling. These models—the biomedical model of disability and the view of disability as a social construct—are by no means the only ways in which to conceptualize disability (hybrid models and other, entirely different, models exist); nevertheless, they are core conceptions of disability and recognizable to many people once they are explained. For folks wanting to know more, Elizabeth Barnes provides a brief overview of these views, their pitfalls, and some other candidate models in Chapter 1 of her 2016 book, The Minority Body: A Theory of Disability.

Let’s extend the social model of disability to education and consider Anomaly’s claim (1). Would Anomaly allow for government-mandated educational accommodations for disabled people? It seems that Anomaly would allow schools and universities to make these adjustments, but that he might not allow government to mandate that schools and universities are obligated to make them. When we combine (1) with (2), (3), and (4), we get a curious result. Insofar as measures of intelligence could be affected by non-biological factors like governmental directives, Anomaly is, in his own words, “skeptical” of such interventions, though he acknowledges that an educated, intelligent populace is a public good. And yet, Anomaly wishes to acknowledge that some racial groups are just smarter than others and that, given their capabilities, some groups of people are just more beneficial to society than others.

The implication of these claims, taken together, seems to be that social accommodations to improve functional outcomes of intelligence are worthy of skepticism, but biological explanations of differences in intelligence between people are to be taken seriously and accepted with relatively little skepticism. The result is a recommendation for paying greater attention to the ostensible genetic bases of the capabilities of individual organisms than to the capabilities all organisms could develop with universal social supports. Although Anomaly acknowledges in “Public Goods and Procreation” that “the science of genetics is still in its infancy,” he seems curiously certain that he can use it to determine how to promote eugenics rather than use it to promote the maximal development and support of the remarkable range of human capabilities. In other words, I think it fair to say that Anomaly wholly embraces a biomedical model of ability/disability, rather than a social model, with predictable consequences for his willingness to target genetics and reproduction in order to produce a society with a greater balance of capabilities.

The power of claims (2)-(4) comes in part from what Mary Midgley described as “having appeared in scientific dress,” as well as what Midgley referred to as “the lure of Reduction—the pleasure of claiming that things are much simpler than they seem” (2011, xiii). Midgley points out that part of the inheritance of the Enlightenment is that we see it as scientific when we talk “as if people were literally and actually machines.” (ibid., 27) We think of this sort of claim as a scientific claim and not as the metaphor that it actually is. In short, Anomaly’s claims rely on genetic determinants of intelligence, empathy, and more, despite decades of actual science that shows how few human conditions with a genetic component are in fact determined by that genetic component.

In particular, Anomaly’s claim that autistic persons, sociopaths, and psychopaths are similarly genetically devoid of empathy (“Defending Eugenics”) is very poor science and does not cohere with current understandings of autism and its relation to empathy. Nor does Anomaly account for what neurodiverse people refer to as upsides or benefits of their conditions. Rather, Anomaly’s conceptions of capabilities and genetics, especially with respect to his discussion of autism, are based on popular/folk psychological conceptions of neurodiversity that bear only a glancing relation to reality. Scientific dress, indeed.

What’s more, people are enormously complex: some people who are very intelligent nonetheless have what Anomaly would consider defects of the body or the mind. For decades, persons with disabilities have been urging the world at large to see their many abilities and not just the traits that are perceived as disabilities. This kind of reductive flattening of a person into what nondisabled people take to be the person’s flaws is an enormous problem, especially when taken as the basis on which to “preserve” or “increase” certain desirable traits, while eliminating and decreasing other, allegedly undesirable traits. Since traits are mixed within people, and any one of us exhibits both desirable and undesirable traits (hold that thought about how we know what is un/desirable), what Anomaly proposes is of course about the elimination of people who have a given un/desirable trait. He would not go so far as to suggest murder and in fact flatly condemns it. But he is certainly willing to countenance coercive contraception in at least some cases in order to prevent people with certain traits from coming into existence. This, too, is a kind of elimination, albeit one that many people find less heinous or even acceptable. It’s the eliminative urge that ought to be questioned, however, and which is based in a biomedical model rather than a social one. Flattening reductionism of the kind that we see in Anomaly’s eugenics makes it seem as if we can talk about eliminating traits without talking about eliminating people. The lure of reductionism makes such talk appealing and even makes it seem reasonable. That is a flattening reductionism that creates a false picture, revealing that this reasonableness is a mere seeming.

Eli Clare pushes back on this reductionist tendency in his use of the term body-minds “in order to recognize both the inextricable relationships between our bodies and our minds and the ways in which the ideology of cure acts as though the two are distinct.” (2017, xvi) Writes Clare:

Eugenicists one and all—they considered some body-minds good, using as their criteria… ablebodiedness and ablemindedness. Other body-minds they deemed bad—marked by defectiveness, degeneracy, deficiency, perversion, feeblemindedness, poverty, criminality, and weakness. They worked to reproduce the ‘good’ and discard the ‘bad.’ History is a torrent shaped around them (Clare 2017, 105).

By referring to people who are targeted for reproduction or removal on the basis of a select few traits with this holistic term rather than by referring to their traits, alone, we can usefully force the larger picture and avoid the flattening reduction of persons to their traits.

The combination of the use of metaphor in scientific dress and the lure of Reduction makes Anomaly’s claims seem quite plausible, even palatable, if one does not stop to consider their implications for very real body-minds who are very real persons, complete with a range of traits and ways of producing good for society. Indeed, in order to be convinced that Anomaly’s arguments are any good, one must ignore the large body of literature in disability studies, philosophy of disability, and philosophy of science that has reflected explicitly on eugenics and reductionism. Beyond this form of the flattening reduction of persons—that is, of body-minds—into just a collection of traits, Anomaly has reductively deployed metrics for desirable and undesirable traits that are themselves suspect.

Given Anomaly’s own express commitments about the ethics of belief, one would think that he would hesitate to use metrics such as IQ to discuss who is desirable and who is not. However, his claims about IQ in both his article on race science and his article on eugenics don’t acknowledge that IQ itself is a concept that classically wears the mere dress of science and is a simplistic, reductive measure of intelligence. To proceed as he has—and for reviewers and editors to allow his arguments to proceed as they have—necessitated that Anomaly ignore the decades of literature that have levied powerful criticisms at the early “scientific eugenicists”—including Galton and other advocates of IQ—whose work Anomaly cites in foundational premises of his arguments. The very concept of IQ misses vast terrains of thought and intellectual capability, as Clare has pointed out in Brilliant Imperfections. Indeed, Clare, who received a diagnosis of “mentally retarded” in 1966 and would once have been a candidate for involuntary sterilization, was at one time a candidate for institutionalization on the basis of “low IQ.” As some readers and listeners of this blog know, Clare’s writing on distinctions between “cure” and health or wellness with respect to disability and chronic conditions is profoundly influential, and deservedly so. His body-mind is indisputably productive and contributive.

I have critically examined whether Anomaly’s claims are actually based in science or whether they are based in metaphors about genetics and its influence that are “dressed in science,” metaphors that ought to be interrogated rather than taken for granted as science. I have also critiqued his ignorance of or failure to engage with the disability literature and the vast body of arguments that should have made his eugenic claims seem suspect and thus, per his own ethics of belief, not worthy of assertion. The qualification that Anomaly makes in the final sentence of “Defending Eugenics”—namely, ”I may be wrong about any of the measures I’ve considered”—does not nullify the fact that he has recommended these policies. Even if it did, it would pertain only to the policies that he recommends. It is no escape clause for the principles that he defends: that some lives are worth more than others, that some lives are a threat to society, that genetics is the basis for this distinction, and that some people who are a threat to society should not come into existence. These critiques, I have levied.

“...who is worthy of protection?” —Eli Clare

And yet, as I have written this piece, I have subtly reproduced (hah!) some of Anomaly’s foundational commitments, if only implicitly. I have not contested Anomaly’s notion that there simply are certain traits that are more desirable than others. When I said above that Clare’s body-mind, despite his testably low IQ in his youth, “is indisputably productive and contributive”, I subtly reinforced the notion that value to society is in fact the measure that we should use to judge who is worthy of protection, and that intelligence—whatever the metric we actually settle on—is a valuable trait. Clare notes with great pathos that when he establishes his right to exist and be respected based on his intelligence, he implicitly devalues those with cognitive disabilities in ways that prevent them from demonstrating value in this established way. It is so tempting to do so precisely because of what Anomaly assumes and what Clare, in one context, describes and critiques:

...in today’s world, being seen as intellectually, cognitively, or developmentally disabled is dangerous because intelligence and verbal communication are entrenched markers of personhood… the pairing of personhood with intelligence needs to change. Yet when faced with allegations or assumptions of stupidity or diminished mental capacity, many of us respond by asserting out intelligence and distancing ourselves from intellectual disability… I’ve repeatedly used intelligence as the marker of my worth and personhood (Claire 2017, 157)

Entrenching the idea that people who “are intelligent” have value whereas people who “are not intelligent” do not have value feeds into eugenic reasoning.

Much as one commentator on Anomaly’s work, Matthew Sears, points out that his problem with eugenicists of the past seems to have been only that they both went to extremes and were wrong about whether Jews were “dysgenic,” Clare points out that insisting that intelligence is more than IQ or more than genetics still preserves intelligence as a criterion for determining which lives have value and which do not, for who is worthy of protection and who is not. We need to be careful that we don’t fall into the trap of thinking that as long as we get our science right on who has which traits, it is fine to reduce their worth to those traits. The greater problem with Anomaly’s work is not that he dresses metaphor in scientific dress, but that the metaphors themselves select some lives as not worth living, as not worth existing, as not worth being allowed to come into existence, as… well… as public bads instead of public goods. This is fundamentally what eugenics does. It is indeed the entire point of eugenics. And this is a value judgment that, by being reductively flattened and presented in scientific dress, is not seen as such. No defense of science, no ethics of belief about evidence, will suffice where the basis of claims is not in fact scientific evidence at all, but highly contestable moral claims.

ZOOMING BACK OUT TO JOURNAL OF CONTROVERSIAL IDEAS

Anomaly’s work, which he has long claimed is under unjust attack, is precisely the sort of work that we could expect to appear in the Journal of Controversial Ideas. But it misrepresents itself and is a deeply flawed argument—set of arguments—for a kind of claim that cannot be idly considered as no different from any other. Make no mistake, any defense of eugenics is a defense of the claim that some kinds of people should not exist and should not procreate, while others deserve to do both. And as such, a defense of eugenics must be treated with the greatest caution and held to rigorous standards of argumentation and engagement with relevant literature.

Relevant literature must include literature that deals with our ability to determine intelligence, empathy, health, etc. It must include literature that takes seriously issues of who should exist and not exist. It must include literature that takes seriously whether we can deal with risk and benefit to society through social supports. And it must include literature that questions the very basis of how we assign value to human beings.

In June of 2018, a loose-knit group of philosophers engaged in an informal debate on social media about whether work like Anomaly’s “Defending Eugenics” should ever be published. While scholars do not necessarily think that a journal’s publication of a claim means that the journal endorses that claim, we do tend to think that a journal’s publication of a claim means that the journal has vetted the quality of the argument supporting that claim and endorses the quality of that argument.

Some members of this loose-knit group of philosophers came down on the side of Publishing All The Things and subjecting them to evaluation in the public squares of our disciplines. There are no things that should not be said, argued these folks. Or at least, there is no reliable criterion for determining which those things are that won’t also prevent other things which should be said from reaching the light of day.

Other participants in this discussion came down on the side of gatekeeping what makes it into the public square, arguing that journal editors (and peer reviewers) have a duty to prevent low-quality arguments or egregious claims from receiving the stamp of approval that comes with publication. Jonathan Kaplan, who was not a peer reviewer but had written the editors of the Monash Bioethics Review regarding some of the flaws in Anomaly’s paper prior to publication, was a member of this group. Kaplan argued as follows (extended quote posted here with his explicit permission).

This isn’t a matter of publishing something unpopular, or edgy, or that many people happen to disagree with... This topic—defending eugenics—is one that, I would argue, any remotely reasonable person of good will would recognize as not merely ‘controversial’ but steeped in a particularly ugly racist history (and one that, historically, was associated with massive and gross harms). This suggests that any reasonable professional acting in good faith (and not just trying to maximize clicks/cites) would approach it with some caution.

It is not impossible for a paper titled ‘Defending Eugenics’ to be a responsible scholarly article, and one that a good journal would be justified in publishing. But minimal professional responsibility demands that a paper on such a topic be vetted with some particular care, to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past. Not necessarily held to higher standards, but extra care taken to ensure that the usual standards are in fact maintained.

So yes, this is about this *particular* paper. But the fact that this *topic* is one that warrants serious care says something about the editors’ professional judgments and responsibility, given that they published a piece that is both of poor academic quality and steeped in racism and misogyny, and it was a topic that any remotely reasonable person of good will would recognize required additional scrutiny compared to e.g. typical meta-ethics papers.

Should a work that presents such ideas be published at all, anywhere? Perhaps. But if it is, it should be held to higher standards than it has been. Anomaly’s own work on the ethics of belief contains the seeds of arguments that would support publication if and only if claims which could do harm rise to the level of evidence. This same kind of criterion and the closer scrutiny that I, with Kaplan, believe can be required of claims that can do harm, would need to be applied at Journal of Controversial Ideas.

For make no mistake, the journal aims to publish high stakes, provocative ideas just like these. If it did not, they would not be controversial. All three of its editors—Singer, McMahan, and Minerva—-are philosophers who will preside over a journal that aims to produce controversial work from a variety of disciplines. Can they provide adequate oversight that controversial ideas will take into account the relevant bodies of work from disciplines as widely varied as hard sciences and theoretical humanities? Will they be able to see when a submission did not? Will they be able to choose reviewers who will do so, and take seriously the feedback of reviewers and anyone else who warns against the quality of a paper that will be, by virtue of having been submitted to this journal, high stakes and controversial? Arguably, Monash Bioethics Review did not. A Journal of Controversial Ideas surely must.

In that old figure of speech, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. There is reason to be skeptical of the very idea of a JCI, and to critique it on the front-end in order to ensure it establishes the standards which it must, but only the thing itself will show us what it is and can be. We shall see whether controversial ideas are indeed given adequate scrutiny. They certainly should be. Anything less would be to reveal that the point of Journal of Controversial Ideas is to simply be controversial. Let us view its publications, as its editors should view its submissions, with a gimlet eye.